My Uncertain Heart
by Spoggly
Summary: Tosh and Ianto interact in the aftermath of four episodes.  Pairings:  Tosh/Ianto, incidental Tosh/Mary, Jack/Ianto, Tosh/Owen, Ianto/Lisa.  Spoilers:  Through End of Days, including the mini-arc of Doctor Who ending with Last of the Time Lords.
1. Chapter 1:  Post Cyberwoman

Tosh was in charge of making sure Ianto didn't do something drastic. When she asked Jack what, exactly, could be more drastic than hiding a Cyber-girlfriend in the basement for months and almost getting the entire team killed (quietly, of course, Owen didn't need any more reason to _accidentally_ poke at lacerations or bruises), he just sighed quietly and said to see that the Hub didn't burn down or that a body wasn't found in the bay the next morning.

"He's concussed and, frankly, I doubt he's dangerous to anyone but himself. Owen's going to give you a few medications you can shoot into him if you want, though."

Tosh made a quiet noise; she didn't even like the regular (and often experimental, no matter what he said about alien vaccinations) injections Owen visited on everyone.

"Tosh, it'll be fine," Jack said, tongue briefly darting out to touch his still-oozing lip. "I wouldn't ask you to do it, but Gwen's too new, and if Owen or I watched him...well, if I have to see him for ten more minutes, I'll end up shooting him after all. I'd give Owen about four minutes. Anyway, he's cuffed, he's sedated, and you have the keys, drugs, and gun."

Tosh nodded, wrapping her arms around herself as Owen led Ianto up the stairs from the autopsy bay. Jack walked away, gesturing to Owen to follow with the hand that wasn't resting on the butt of his holstered Webley. Ianto wouldn't meet her eyes, squinting down at the floor through bruised lids. There was blood drying on his suit and in his hair, sticking the slight curls down, and his hands were cuffed in front of him.

"Come on, then," she said softly, taking his elbow. He jerked at her touch but followed her quietly though the Hub door.

They were almost to her car before he spoke.

"It's not fair that they're making you do it."

"What?" Tosh almost shouted at him, so startled by him speaking to her that she almost jumped out of her skin.

"Retcon. Execution. It should be," he muttered, making a subdued hand gesture that she was forced to interpret as referring to Owen, for the medical administration of retcon, or Jack, for the administration of a bullet.

"It's not like that, Ianto," she said firmly, unlocking her car and all but shoving him into the passenger door. And wasn't it almost fun to be able to manhandle a six-foot bloke? But the fine fabric beneath her hands was stiff with drying blood, and the glints of silver from his wrists reminded her of her power over him and of the reason she had been given it in the first place.

This, she reflected as she buckled her seat belt, was going to be an _awkward _night.

The feeling did not abate over the long drive to her flat. She sat, feeling diminutive and powerless in the driver's seat, feeling the palpable rage and confusion radiating off Ianto in the passenger's seat. She barely curbed the impulse to announce the turns of the GPS as she took them, reasoning that one turn was the same to him. There would be more than enough time for awkward instruction when they got to her apartment.

"Well!" she said, putting her car in park, all too soon. "Here we are!"

Ianto didn't say anything; he didn't stir at all, which unnerved her slightly. What if he didn't cooperate when she went to get him out of the car? What would her neighbours think? How would she explain this, and oh, why couldn't he have handled this himself?

But when she opened the passenger door and saw the dark bruises blooming on Ianto's face, it was like a punch in the gut. This was why he was on her doorstep. Jack didn't trust himself with this man, and she couldn't forget her own sins in the face of this child, skin bruising even as she stood on her doorstep.

"Come on," she murmured, taking Ianto's elbow and trying her best to guide his weight down to the pavement. Ianto didn't say anything, but followed the gentle pressure of her hand, and barely startled at the clang of the closing car door.

It was almost surprisingly easy to lead him up to her door - he was just as docile as under the threat of Jack's gun. She wasn't sure if she had been expecting him to rebel against a gentler touch, but felt gratified when she was able to steer him into her guest room.

"You can change in here, if you want to," she said, colouring slightly. "Jack sent clothes home that you can change into."

Ianto just nodded, not looking at the bed, the walls, or her.

"I'll just leave them in the loo," she mumbled. "It's the second door on your right. If you need me, I'll be in the kitchen!"

And with that, she was finally able to abandon him to the mercy of her hot water and the pipes. It was unfair, she thought, for Jack to entrust her with Ianto's well-being. Although, if she was honest, there was no one else to do it.


	2. Chapter 2:  Post Countrycide

"Come in, I've just...I've got to lie down."

Ianto left the door open and shuffled down the short hall to his bedroom. Tosh followed him in, pulling the door shut and sliding the three deadbolts home behind her. The flat was still painted a dull white, but there was more furniture now, at least in the living room before her. Before, when she had checked in after Lisa, there had just been boxes everywhere, stacked in the corners of the room, a threadbare sofa, and a few mismatched chairs. The chairs were still there, but now there was a new sofa and art on the walls.

"I see you took my advice on the Shashin print," she said, recognizing one of the pieces from an image search she and Ianto had whiled away a slow day on.

"Yeah," he said, voice echoing out from the bathroom, speaking loudly over the running sink. "I wanted the original, but it turns out the Smithsonian is less than impressed with Torchwood since that incident in '95."

"Seriously?"

"Well, no. Not about the painting, anyway. They _are_ still peeved with us, though."

She smiled slightly, imagining Ianto trying to talk a curator into shipping over an original, claiming there was an alien message encoded in it or that it emitted an otherwordly radiation. Ianto interrupted her daydreaming, sticking his head out of the open bathroom door.

"Do you want a shower or anything? I've settled for the sink, but I can leave some towels out for you if you'd like."

"No," she shouted back, "I showered before I came over."

Belatedly she considered whether she should have come at all, but the memory of Ianto's fingers trembling around her own on the ride back to Cardiff re-solidified her resolve.

She wandered into the apparent living room, home of the couch and print, and still the omnipresent boxes.

She trailed fingers over the errant cardboard flaps reading "LISA - Books," and "LISA - Photos," loathe to investigate further with Ianto in just the other room. Thankfully, she was examining the DVDs on the flimsy, second-hand bookshelf when he emerged from the steaming shower, hair wet but body fully clothed, bruises on his neck and wrists the only sign of their shared ordeal.

"Did you want to watch something?" he asked, rubbing his hair with another damp towel.

She trailed her fingers over a box-set of James Bond videos, unable to lie in the startling sadness of her coworker's life.

"I just don't want to be alone," she whispered, almost inaudible, even under the bathroom fans and the traffic sounds filtering in through the curtains.

Ianto just nodded, giving a final, almost decisive rub to his hair before dropping the towel to the floor. He snatched the corner of a throw off of the nearest corner of the sofa next to him and, throwing it to Tosh, said, "I'm going to go heat up whatever I have in the fridge that's vegetarian."

Tosh tried to cut him off, because after all, she hadn't had to spend as much time in the fridge as he had.

As though he had read her thoughts, he shook his head and threw the rest of the blanket at her. "It may just be tea and popcorn," he said, "but at least...well, you know."

She nodded, and watched him limp into the kitchenette. Snuggling deeper into the threadbare duvet, she knew that this was where she was meant to be in this moment.

Jack could have added flash, Gwen a cloying sympathy, and Owen a brusque examination of her bruises, but Ianto had seen the same hunger in the Beacons that she had, and if he wanted to watch camp videos to deal with it, as long as he didn't kick her out of his shabby flat, she could deal with it. 


	3. Chapter 3: Post Greeks Bearing Gifts

She dreamed about Mary for the first time that night, and woke up to a now-familiar slick slide between her legs, and a familiar wetness on her cheeks.

She had cried like this in Unit, at first, quiet and without noticing it for minutes, huddled in a corner on the hard dirt. After she realised no one was coming, that there was _no one_ who even knew where she was, she had started screaming, clutching at the steel door, breaking fingernails and her voice in tearing sobs. When no one even came to tell her to shut up, the reality of her situation had truly hit. She had no identity, no citizenship, no name. The loss of her identity had been the most terrifying thing she had ever experienced, selfishly worse than knowing her mother was at the mercy of terrorists.

It was the memory of that fear that hit when she realized what had happened with Mary - not only the loss of love, but the loss of herself in ways that could not be retroactively quantified. The blurring of the lines between herself and everyone else, hearing thoughts and not realising where they came from, if they were hers or someone else's. It was that sick memory that made her forgive Jack before she had the chance to be truly angry - her rescue from prison and his murder of her lover blending together, confused by the unsettling feeling of being slammed back into her own mind, the borders firm and blessedly _known_ again.

She sat up suddenly, forcing her thoughts away from the spiral they were heading into - what was past was past, and she would just put her life back together. She was good at it by now.

Wiping her cheeks with the corner of the duvet, Tosh could still smell a faint trace of smoke, the lingering tobacco scent enough to twist her stomach sharply. She pushed herself off the bed and fled the room, padding on bare feet.

The omnipresent tobacco smell got sharper as she neared the kitchen.

"Hi," Ianto said, almost shame-facedly, as he ground a butt into the over-flowing eggcup sitting on her kitchen table.

"Did Jack send you?" she asked, lacking even the energy to be awkward about her neon-pink robe and slippers.

"Well..." he started,

"Be honest," she snapped. As if it wasn't enough to be humiliated in the Hub!

"He asked me to make sure there was no alien technology left in your flat," he said. "But there was nothing in my orders about waiting for you to wake up, and putting fags out in your kitchen bowls."

She was suddenly furious that he was treating this like any other day, like this was any other alien incursioun, filled with civilians hanging on his every word and action like they would offer some sort of explanation or closure to what they had been witness to.

"And you do everything you ask, do you?" she yelled. "Come in and rummage through my kitchen, my waste-bins, it's all here for you to look through? Is this like any other disgusting little job Jack sends you out on, find this, pocket that, make sure it's cleaned up with no questions asked!"

When he just looked at her, calm facade only slightly broken around the mouth, she was made suddenly aware of her volume, suddenly reminded of the dark trains of thought she'd unknowingly spied on from her wire-strewn desk.

She was opening her mouth to apologize, gaze fixed on her suddenly-absurd slippers, when his hand settled on her shoulder.

"Well," he murmured, "only some of us can be granted girlfriends who don't smoke. And at least yours never actually tried to kill anyone on the team."

And he didn't seem surprised at all when she burst into tears and melted into his shoulder, getting salt and half-formed apologies and explanations down his lapel. By the time she had finished breaking down, he had produced a handkerchief and a catalogue of several obscenely expensive home furnishings stores in the area.

"Jack's not paying," he said, wiping tears from her cheekbone with a calloused thumb, "so feel free to pick out whatever you want."


	4. Chapter 4: Post End of Days

Jack had been gone for three weeks, and the team had been back from the Himalayas for one. Tosh still shivered whenever she thought about the consuming cold of the mountains, the snow interfering with her instruments even when she could get her numb fingers to cooperate. They'd all been miserable then, broken with the loss of Jack, and sick with the constant failure of their mission.

But now they were back, after one long flight and several days off, and things were slowly normalising. Gwen and Owen were sniping at each other while Tosh kept her head down and worked on her time program. Ianto often disappeared into the archives, leaving the tourist office closed for the day, but even that wasn't unusual. After Lisa he'd taken more responsibility with the filing, working to make sure that any information they needed would be available.

So it surprised her when one night (thirty-four days after Jack, her mind automatically inserted), she answered a knock on her flat door and found Ianto standing outside.

"Is something wrong?" she asked on autopilot, scrolling through lists of predicted Rift flare-ups in her head and coming up empty.

"No, nothing," he said, voice hoarse. "I just...didn't want to go home."

"Oh."

She didn't ask questions, didn't point out that he was losing weight again, that there were deep circles under his eyes. Tosh herself had been having nightmares, Abaddon and Owen's blood on the concrete floor and the inexplicable, chilling laughter of children. She was afraid that if she asked Ianto about them, he'd say he was startled awake by the same sense of _wrongness_. So instead she just reeled him through the door, hand startlingly pale on the dark wool of his jacket.

"I think _Rear Window_'s on rerun in fifteen minutes," Tosh said, about to turn and head into the living room. "I could order some-"

Ianto's mouth slamming onto hers was unexpected, more than his grip on her hand being used to pull her into him.

She almost pulled back, almost broke away - back to friendly touches, movies until they fell asleep, take-out because neither one had the energy or inclination to care about cooking. But Ianto's tongue was running across her closed lips and his hand was warm on hers.

And Jack was _gone_, and Owen was a moron, and so what if they were lonely?

She opened her mouth to Ianto's and he licked his way inside, his tongue sliding across the backs of her teeth as his free hand slid under the hem of her blouse. She let him thumb the bottom two buttons open before stopping him.

"You know where the bedroom is," she whispered, afraid to speak too loudly or look too closely at him.

He slid his mouth down and nodded into her neck, mouthing the hollow of her clavicle.

He walked backwards down the hall, pulling her after him, sucking a mark next to the lowest part of her collar. Sitting her down on the bed, thankfully made that morning before she left for work, he kneeled down and pulled her heels off, setting them to the side.

Her breath hitched when he looked up, through his lashes, at her, and laid a firm kiss right above her ankle. He trailed his hands up the outsides of her bare legs, running them under the hem of her skirt as his mouth followed. Past her knee, up into the soft skin of her inner thigh. He finally broke eye contact and stood up, guiding her higher onto the bed and down onto her back. She quickly started unbuttoning her blouse, feeling like if she waited too long or questioned this he would remember that she was just the techie, that he had been having sex with an intergalactic playboy, that he was just lonely or drunk - although she hadn't tasted liquor in his mouth.

He looked up from his removal of her skirt and quirked the corner of his mouth up at her, like he could hear what she was thinking. Long fingers deftly flicked open the clasp of her bra while Tosh said a quick mental thank you for putting on something that was cute and closed in the front.

"You're beautiful," she heard Ianto say. He was looking her in the eye, not staring at her breasts. She smiled shyly and shook her head.

"No, really," he said, leaning back down and tossing her panties over the side of the bed. "You're gorgeous."

And then his mouth was sliding down her stomach, tracing around her bellybutton.

He didn't hesitate like most of the men she'd slept with, and didn't tease like Mary had. She came faster and harder under his tongue, his long fingers stroking her from the inside out, than she ever had.

When he kissed her afterwards the salty taste of herself overlaid everything as Ianto's hand moved slowly on her breast. When she tried to move him so she could reciprocate, he shook his head gently, even though she could feel his erection hot and hard against her thigh. Instead he kissed her with wet and swollen lips, softer and softer, moving his other hand through her loose hair, until she fell asleep.

When she woke up in the morning, she was surprised to see he was still there, scrunched down among her disheveled sheets, face in her ribs and arm thrown over her belly. She didn't wake him, just laid a tentative hand on his hair and turned her face back into the pillow, determined to keep this one morning for herself.

****

The next time he came by she slammed him against the hallway wall, afraid to take her mouth off his until she heard him laughing softly.

She felt him straightening up more than she saw it. It was easy to forget how tall he was when he hung back along the walls of the Hub, politely not looming over her or Gwen. Unlike Jack, who had never been a fan of personal space, or Owen, who was never afraid to press an advantage.

She was startled out of ranking the team by height when Ianto's hand tickled behind her knees. Shrieking, she was lifted into the air.

"Come on, then," he said, smiling down at her.

She had to hide her laughter in his collar, unable to stop giggling, unafraid that she would be dropped.


End file.
